Global History M1

This is not a history course properly understood. While it revisits a vast array of both renown and neglected episodes of history, from encounters on the silk roads over witch trials in Europe to the destruction of the palace of the emperor of China, it does not provide any encompassing, universal history. Instead, this is a course in historical perspective and reflection encouraging students to think critically about how such everyday historical notions as origins, progress, and development are always already part of our political imagination and academic analysis. In this sense, ‘history’ is not only inescapable, but also shapes what seems desirable, possible, and necessary in research and political practice. Following a prelude on different perspectives on history, the course discusses in part I common master tropes in history, including ‘repetition’, ‘origins’, and ‘progress’, which are behind such narratives as the rise and fall of great powers, the identity of ‘the West’, and mankind’s collective evolution. It probes in part II the fragmentation of these stereotypical imaginations by exploring contingencies and virtual histories, cultural connections and hybridity, and untold stories and silenced subjects. In part III, the course cursorily revisits elements of the global emergence of modernity, including in terms of political economy, international order, and integration in and resistance to a Western-dominated world.